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Matthew Balan has been a news analyst at Media Research Center since February 2007. Previously, he worked for the Heritage Foundation from 2003 until 2006, and for Human Life International in 2006.He graduated from the University of Delaware with a bachelor's in political science and history.

Thursday's CNN Newsroom hyped the Supreme Court's decision that again upheld ObamaCare as a "huge win for the President of the United States," as Wolf Blitzer put it. Gloria Borger and John King tied the Court decision to Congress passing the President's fast-track trade legislation earlier in the week. Borger trumpeted, "You have trade legislation being approved – huge win for the President. You have this reaffirmation of ObamaCare...huge for his legacy." King added, "This may well be the best week of his second term."

The New York Post's Lou Lumenick likened Gone with the Wind to the Confederate flag in a Wednesday item: "If the Confederate flag is finally going to be consigned to museums as an ugly symbol of racism, what about the beloved film offering the most iconic glimpse of that flag in American culture?" The film critic contended that the classic movie goes to "great lengths to enshrine the myth that the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery — an institution the film unabashedly romanticizes."

On Wednesday's New Day, CNN's Chris Cuomo repeatedly tried to get Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson to attack conservatives, as well as his competitors, on the Confederate flag controversy. Cuomo asked, "Isn't it a part of leadership saying to people who don't want to call what happened in this Charleston church a hate crime – calling them out on that, and showing them that that is not a time to play politics and say that race colors too much of the public discussion?"

On Tuesday, the Washington Post promoted an article touting how "many" supposedly view Bobby Jindal as "a man who has spent a lifetime distancing himself from his Indian roots" by Tweeting a professor's eyebrow-raising claim about the Louisiana governor: "There's not much Indian left in Bobby Jindal." In Wednesday's newspaper, that quote served as the big headline on page A-9.

CNN's Chris Cuomo zeroed in on five state flags that have supposed "strong Confederate references" on Monday's New Day. Cuomo cited unnamed experts on flags and symbols who claim that the state flags of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee – along with that of Mississippi and Georgia (which incorporate two different Confederate flags) have such "references." He later wondered, "Do all of these flags have to go? Does each deserve separate consideration? Is there a 'too far' involved with something like this?"

On Monday, the Washington Post's Express tabloid ran a blatantly anti-Catholic ad on its front page. The full-page advertisement from the far-left "Catholics For Choice" group spoofed the famous World War I-era "I Want You" military recruiting poster, and evoked the worst of 19th century Know-Nothingism. Instead of Uncle Sam, a caricature of a Catholic bishop with a miter on his head points at the viewer, and asks, "We Want You To Help Us Discriminate."

In a Thursday item on NBC News's web site, Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Andrew Rafferty asserted that "just like the issue of gay marriage, the Pope and the Catholic Church have gone from being wedge issues that benefitted the GOP in 2004 to ones that now favor Democrats." The three journalists cited Associated Press's reporting on Pope Francis's new encyclical on the environment, and concluded that "what this news does is guarantee that climate change is a conversation in GOP presidential debates, especially since several of the candidates...are Catholic."

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, Jan Crawford hyped the latest "dust-up between the musician and the politician," and underlined that "rare is the Republican candidate who isn't told to stop the music – even if...they paid licensing fees." She asked a GOP strategist, "Why is it it's always Republicans who are getting slammed by the musicians for using their songs?"

Delia Gallagher touted Pope Francis's upcoming encyclical on the environment on Wednesday's Wolf program on CNN by claiming how "Church leaders say that this is the first time the release of a papal encyclical has been so anticipated." Gallagher spotlighted an "epic theatrical trailer for the Pope's words" from an environmentalist group in Brazil," and hyped that "with the Pope's popularity, this encyclical will be a milestone that places the Roman Catholic Church at the forefront of one of the major scientific and moral issues of our times."

On Tuesday's New Day, CNN's Michaela Pereira criticized former NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal for her false narrative about her race: "To a lot of people, it's as though she's just appropriating a lifestyle, a culture, a racial identity. And the fact is, she's told a lot of lies about other things."

Jeffrey Tayler of The Atlantic treated religious belief as a mental illness in a Sunday column for the far-left website Salon, which targeted Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for "imposing your obscurantist dogma on impressionable young minds" – specifically, "the bizarre Catholic cult." Tayler made no secret of his anti-Catholic bigotry when he slammed the supposed "pedophile pulpiteers of your creed [who] have...warp[ed] the minds of their credulous 'flocks' for two millennia."

In a Friday column, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank again misquoted a conservative, where he attacked pro-lifers for not being "on the right side of logic" for opposing abortion, but not supporting "contraceptives [which] would seriously reduce abortions." Milbank cited Americans United for Life's Charmaine Yoest, who supposedly stated, "'I haven't seen anything' to convince her that more contraceptive use reduces abortions. She [Yoest] pointed to Guttmacher's 2011 findings that between 2001 and 2008, a reduction in the proportion of pregnancies ending in abortion 'could represent increased difficulty in accessing abortion services.'"

Friday's Morning Edition on NPR spotlighted the author of children's books who asserted that the push for the legalization of same-sex "marriage" is "the same struggle" as the fight against bans on interracial marriage during the 1960s. Karen Grigsby Bates marked the anniversary of the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, which struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, by featuring writer/artist Selina Alko, who stated that "while the Loving case is long settled, it's still deeply relevant in the current fight for marriage equality."

On Friday's NBC Nightly News, Andrea Mitchell touted how Hillary Clinton "will get personal" at her upcoming NYC campaign rally, and that she will be will be "focusing on her late mother, Dorothy Rodham – twice abandoned as a child by her parents; forced to make her way across country and work as a maid." Mitchell played two clips from a campaign video where Mrs. Clinton spoke highly of her mom, and underlined that "Clinton credits her mother for her passion and values – especially fighting for women and children – one reason she wants to be president."

CNN's Brianna Keilar badgered Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson on Thursday's Wolf program over his recent comment on LGBT issues: "I didn't remember any times when there were signs up that says...gay people have to drink at this fountain. I was a little irritated." Keilar repeatedly asked Carson: "Do you think that gay Americans are discriminated against?" When the candidate refused to give a direct answer, the journalist reprimanded him: "If you're running for president, I think it's fair to ask you this question. Part of being a candidate is to answer questions."

Alex Wagner, along with her three liberal guests, ripped Jerry Seinfeld on her MSNBC program on Wednesday, for his blast at "creepy" political correctness. Wagner hinted that Seinfeld had "fallen behind the times." New York magazine's Annie Lowrey mocked his critique: "I kind of roll my eyes at Jerry Seinfeld. You know, he's a billionaire – like I don't feel sorry for him if people don't laugh hard enough at his jokes."

CNN president Jeff Zucker targeted his network's competitors, MSNBC and Fox News, during a Wednesday interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Zucker returned fire in response to a 2014 claim by Fox News Channel CEO Roger Ailes that CNN is "out of the news business." The network executive retorted, "It's absurd on its face. The fact is, we're doing more news than we've ever done. We're doing more news than anybody else."

Jerry Seinfeld blasted political correctness on the early Wednesday edition of NBC's Late Night With Seth Meyers. Seinfeld cited how he recently got a negative reaction to a "gay French king" joke: "I can imagine a time when people say, 'Well, that's offensive to suggest that a gay person moves their hands in a flourishing motion, and you now need to apologize.' I mean, there's a creepy PC thing out there that really bothers me."

The editorial page editors at the New York Times posted a Tuesday item on their blog that shamelessly played up how the main villain from the Harry Potter book series, Voldemort, has a "higher rating than six Republicans, including Jeb Bush." The Washington Post's WonkBlog "compared polling data on the presidential hopefuls with Google Consumer Survey results on the fictional characters."

CNN's New Day stumbled on Tuesday as it covered the ongoing manhunt for two fugitives who escaped from a prison in New York State. An on-screen map incorrectly identified Pennsylvania as New York, as correspondent Polo Sandoval underlined that "the fugitives could be anywhere from New York's North Country up to Canada, or even south into Mexico."

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